


Icarus

by BosieJan



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Harry Hart Lives, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, merlahad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 22:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5309456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BosieJan/pseuds/BosieJan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone once told Harry, once upon a time, that being shot was the worst kind of agony the human body could experience. When in reality, it simply felt like going home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icarus

Someone once told Harry, once upon a time, that being shot was the worst kind of agony the human body could experience. The shock to the nervous system sometimes caused cardiac arrest, and the fright itself, from the pain and the shock, often made the victims soil themselves. Now, Harry had chuckled because over the course of his thirty four years as a Kingsman field agent, he’d been shot approximately twice, and neither shot had done more damage than a deep grazing; once on his left hand and once on his left ankle.

 

The day a bullet struck straight and true to his left temple--what /was/ it with lefts?--Harry heard the shot firing off, but would never classify the immediate darkness and deafening silence which followed, as ‘agony’.

 

It felt like going home.

 

The ground beneath him, all jumbled gravel and poorly-tended tarmac, wasn’t a hard mattress for himself to fall back on. Harry was absolutely, if not justifiably, unconscious in the sunny parking lot, and no souls stirred from within the church to help him up. Nor would they, if any had survived. They had seen what he did to their fellow parishioners, and revenge would surely be on their minds, despite the lack of Valentine’s influence. Their poisonous ideals would drive their hatred, and Harry would have found himself doubly doomed.

 

The recovery team came less than five minutes later, already dispatched by Merlin before the agent handler had even sent Harry stateside. Standard procedure during any mission, orthodox or not, and sanctioned or unsanctioned, was to dispatch a recovery team from the location’s local HQ, and have them on standby. The closest HQ to the remote town in Kentucky had been in Washington, DC, and the recovery team were on the scene even without Merlin’s go-ahead. Surveillance of the area was likewise procedure, and they recorded the scene even after Harry’s glasses had been shattered.

 

The fact that Harry was alive when the team got him out of the gravel and into their waiting van, was a miracle. More than one recovery agent made a remark about it having been on holy ground where the fight took place, and that it must have been the work of some higher power that Harry was alive. A few of them agreed, but some merely mentioned the decent quality of the tech, and ‘Can’t you see that Merlin’s magic saved him?’. The glasses had apparently taken the brunt of the impact and though bullet fragments had lacerated his temple and along a good portion of the side of his head, Harry was without a hole in his skull and a bleeding brain, which was what they had initially feared.

 

There /was/ a fracture in his skull, later scans had revealed, but nothing more than a gentle swelling of his brain and no internal bleeding. Heads wounds have been, and always will be, vicious bleeders; the amount of blood on the ground to Harry’s side and the amount lost during transport to the medical facility in DC had been great, and proved another threat to the aging agent. Harry needed a lot of blood and he could get it, but he’d be stuck in Washington for the duration of his recovery.

As was the case with most government offices, city-wide emergency services, and secret spy agencies, being busy after V-Day was an understatement. The lack of a few agents due to attacks during Valentine’s massacre had happened, and the Kingsman organization was down to nine field agents, including Roxy in the position of Lancelot. The loss of Geraint and Gawain had been particularly hard on Percival, whose friendship with both had gone back to the mid nineties, but the loss of Galahad finally hit Eggsy hard a month later. Roxy did her best to keep Eggsy busy and in the weeks immediately following V-Day’s one month ‘anniversary’, and it was Merlin that finally gave in to pressure from the other agents, and knighted Eggsy as an agent proper.

 

The code name of Galahad was given as Eggsy was Harry’s protege, and would have likely taken over the position after Roxy’s knighting as Lancelot anyway. His prowess in the fight against Valentine, and the fact that he and merlin had saved the world, was taken into account alongside his actually-excellent training records, and no complaints were filed. 

 

Now, it’s not to assume that Harry had been entirely forgotten in America, either. 

 

Merlin scoured the records from the American HQ’s, and though it was DC HQ that had been given the task of finding and recovering Harry after his incident, none there had any reports of an Agent Galahad, or person by the civilian name of Harry Hart in their records. Paperwork went missing and things got lost during the mess following V-Day, merlin understood that, but a goddamn UK field agent had been picked up, because no reports from any hospitals, medical centers, emergency clinics or mortuaries had shown record of anyone resembling Harry, and seemingly admitted as nameless.

 

“Then you get your fucking arse in gear, you understand me?” Merlin barked into the microphone, the video feed on the large array of screens before him showing the somewhat cowed face of a woman seemingly in her mid thirties. “He’s my top agent, /Miss Patterson/, and if I don’t recover his body, there’s going to be a goddamn demotion in your future. Now I suggest you cross-reference your incoming casualty reports with any recovery agent present on the fourteenth of February, in that god-forsaken hellhole of a place you call Kentucky. I’ll not answer your correspondence again until you’ve found him.”

 

Merlin slapped a hand down on the terminus button and the line went dead, punctuated by a vicious swear and a grind of his teeth. No amount of coffee or tea could keep him awake long enough to find Harry and be satisfied with what he’d found, so Merlin closed down his station for the night and finally trudged his way upstairs to what had once been Arthur’s--or Chester King’s--office. As acting head of Kingsman for the time being, Merlin had kept his own name rather than changing to Arthur, and he locked up there, as well. He needed to go home, have a shower, have something substantial to eat, and then maybe sleep. Or have a long wank to tire himself out completely, then sleep the sleep of the intensely drained.

 

\----------------------------------

Seven weeks had passed since V-Day, and a notification came up on Merlin’s private feed in the Handling department. It was a dainty little chime, and Merlin glanced at it with caution, but also apprehension. Few people had access to the feed, and Merlin kept the amount of people on a very short list. One he could count on a single hand.

 

Arthur (then Chester), now deleted and available, should Merlin find someone else upon which he could offer trust. Eggsy. Roxy. His landlady; a kind Englishwoman, whose palatial flat in the older part of Primrose Hill had been a boon to Merlin’s self-esteem, and a point of conjecture between himself and Harry, as Harry’s flat on the Mews was high-class but not ‘Primrose Hill’ level. And Harry.

 

<<I loved you as Icarus loved the Sun>>

 

Merlin stared at the bright green monotype text, his eyes narrowing as he tried to think of how the message had been sent. There was no email address, nor a subject line. No name with which to reply. He knew the line; it was from a poem called ‘Icarus In Love’, by David Jones. Merlin had never fancied himself a great lover of poetry, but Harry had been. Harry loved things related to love and the romantic trash that came along with it. He may have been a skilled killer and one hell of a filthy lover, but Harry had also been heartbreakingly in love with the very notion of romance.

 

Merlin’s hands shook a little bit as he licked his lips and thought on how to proceed. Had Miss Patterson done her job? No, there weren’t any messages from her, nor had UK HQ received any formal paperwork regarding the location of one of their field agents. The message was typed on what certainly wasn’t a computer, due to the spacing of the letters and the colour of the text. It was almost as if the private messaging system had been hacked into, and a message was made directly through its exchange server.

 

He clicked ‘reply’ just to see what it would do and a secondary window popped open, showing the text Merlin had received, and a space in which he could type his reply. Merlin gritted his teeth, slightly angry as if someone were playing a game with him, but also off balance because..no, it couldn’t be Harry. Merlin had seen the recoil of Harry’s body as Valentine’s bullet threw him to the ground. The cloud of blood expanding from the back of Harry’s head hasn’t been an illusion, no matter how Merlin wished it had been.

 

\--Too close. Too much.--

 

Merlin clicked the Send button on the final two lines of the poem and waited, his heart thrumming away in his chest as if he were waiting to fall away from the sun himself. He licked his lips again and wiped at his forehead with the cuff of his shirtsleeve, the room suddenly feeling much cooler and the walls seemingly closer than they had been only seconds earlier.

 

The chime came again, and Merlin found himself almost reluctant to open it. He hovered his finger over the button on his Comm center and closed his eyes as he brought the finger down to open the message, not even breathing as the window opened, showing the exchange between himself and the mystery sender. Directly below his neatly typed serif text, in the same hideous, out-dated green monotype text, was salvation.

 

<<Hello Merlin>>

 

Merlin immediately began typing in response, questions, and demands, and requests. He stopped suddenly, hovering over a partially-typed string of curse words, then backed everything out until the reply box was empty. He sent back a single word reply and only received a single word in response, before his phone rang.

 

\--Harry?--

 

<<Yes>>

 

Merlin grabbed for his mobile after jumping from surprise and punched the touch screen hard enough to send it flipping from his grasp, his coordination thrown right off by the bodily upset and mental confusion. He caught the phone before it hit the concrete floor and tapped the spot to answer the call, then held the phone cautiously to his ear, almost whispering his hello.

 

“Aye?”

 

“I haven’t words enough to tell you how happy I am to hear your voice, Merlin. Send a jet to my coordinates. You can still trace them, despite being surprised, can you not?”

 

Merlin swallowed, listening to Harry’s voice with his eyes closed and tears soaking his lashes as they tried to escape. He was a strong man, he’d seen worse, and he was absolutely not going to cry over his thought-to-be-deceased lover. 

 

“I will have someone there as soon as possible, and I’ll slaughter you upon seeing you in person.”

 

“You can’t spell slaughter without laughter, Merlin.”

 

Merlin choked on his own spit for a brief moment, both appalled by Harry’s bold reply after being presumed dead for almost two months, and his lack of vocal upset over the entire thing. 

 

“No, but I /can/ spell ‘fuck you’ with a ‘fuck’ and a ‘you. Jet’s on its way. Give it a few hours and don’t you /dare/ give that pilot a hard time. We’ve replaced a great deal of people, and some of them won’t even know who you are.”

 

“Spectacular. See you by dinnertime.”

 

“Harry?”

 

There was a slight intake of breath, as if Harry’s gusto had finally deflated. “..yes?”

 

“I..I don’t want..this can’t ever happen again, all right? I can’t..handle it again.”

 

“I love you too, Merlin.”

 

The line went dead with a healthy click from a proper hang-up on the other end and Merlin slammed his phone down onto the desk so it wouldn’t hit the floor, as he crumpled back into his chair. he hadn’t even noticed standing up as he answered the phone, but he covered his face with both hands as he cried hard and for a long time, his throat raw and his eyes red by the time he finished. He let himself catch his breath and went to the washroom for a moment to tidy himself up, then went about prep for the jet’s arrival.

 

It would be hours before the jet arrived and Merlin fretted but didn’t reveal the existence of Harry to anyone. He worried that Eggsy would take it as an invitation to hound him until Harry got back, and Roxy would most certainly tell Eggsy immediately, so keeping the secret felt rather bad. He only told the flight coordinators what they /needed/ to know before heading out, and then told the garage crew to be ready for a particularly secretive arrival. They asked no questions and stayed ready until the jet arrived.

 

Medical was notified that they may be needed, and a stretcher and medical team were on hand, but seeing Harry stepping out of the plane on his own two feet had Merlin waving them back down to the Medical wing, and his heart going back to its fluttering little dance. He felt nervous, as if he were greeting some kind of royal dignitary or celebrity, when in fact it was only Harry Hart; bedraggled, needing a haircut, and slimmer than merlin had remembered him, but Harry nonetheless. 

 

Whole, and alive.

 

“And so Icarus fell; whole but burned. The blinding light in his eyes and the warmth in his heart, but it was the bitter chill of the ocean that ended him. Separating him from his beloved Sun.”

 

Harry smiled, as he leaned in to Merlin’s open arms, the flap of Merlin’s greatcoat silenced by Harry’s weight against him. “That’s beautiful, Merlin, but it isn’t Jones.”

 

“You’re right, it’s not. It’s Merlin.”

 

“Are you my Sun?”

 

“Aye. Now come on and let Medical give you a once-over. We can chat details later.”

 

“Fair enough. Thank you..for sending the plane.”

 

Merlin felt himself get emotional and he bit it back, only turning to look Harry in the eye.

 

“Thank you for staying alive long enough for me to see you again.”

 

“Oh, you think I did that just for you, hm?”

 

“I love you, Harry.”

 

“I know.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Just a proper fix-it starting where Harry met his 'end'. So many people gloss over what happened to him, and I refuse to write a fic where he comes back with amnesia. What a terrible, terrible trope. May post more chapters, may not. Not sure how well I can continue without diverging into my previous fic, Off-Kilter. We'll see.


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